Higher Education: Career Mastery Is a Matter of Choice

The direction our lives take is the result of the choices we make. Choices usually occur in the moment, yet their rewards and consequences continue throughout our lifetime. Our choices are influenced by our experience, education, culture, friends, enemies, attitude and aptitudes. Opening one’s self to any possibility, at any given time and under any given circumstances will cause us to either choose based on gut feeling, past experience or qualified data. Before you do the next thing you do, consider the results: Will it help or will it hurt? Is it ethical? Is it legal?

The path ahead

Our emergency services mission—to save lives and property in the safest, most efficient operation—depends on a personal commitment to professional development. A personal obligation to life-long learning means more than digging out the books and updating the résumé when a promotion opportunity arises. Our duty to provide the best service arises with each call, each training session and in all of the daily tasks we accomplish.

Remember that as an emergency responder, we are always one injury or one decision away from a potential career change. How will you provide for yourself and your family if the change is due to a negative choice? How will you respond? Are you preparing yourself by seeking out new learning opportunities, shadowing your mentors or perusing new inspiration? 

The U.S. Fire Administration deputy administrator often poses this scenario: How would you answer your child when they come to you and ask, “How do you become a doctor or lawyer?” The simple answer is: four years in college (medical/law school), several years in internship and residency practice, and then usually a state certification exam.

But what if your child asks how to become a fire chief? At present there is no simple answer. However, a scan of fire chief employment announcements reveals a national trend to hire those with advanced degrees in addition to the National Fire Academy Executive Officer Program (EFOP) and the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) Fire Officer Designations. In some localities, some level of higher education is also included as a part of the basic firefighter application qualification. 

We all know personnel who are great tacticians who we would follow into any emergency, but would we allow them to balance our checkbook? We also know people who are great politicians and business leaders who could charm the socks off a snake, but would we expect them to command a dumpster fire? Remember, in larger departments where chief officers do not respond to all incidents, when you put on that fourth or fifth bugle, you cease to be a hands-on firefighter and require a different skill set to become a master business leader. We train to drag hose, lift ladders and apply bandages. But we must become educated in politics, budgets and human workforce development to become a successful manager. 

Pillars of professional development

Those who seem to possess the innate skills to master a technical, political or administrative position usually work hard reinforcing the four pillars of personal professional development: 1) dynamic training, 2) academic education, 3) relevant experience and 4) continuing education. To attain mastery, they place extra effort on finding new learning opportunities, not only in their chosen vocation, but also additional areas of interest. These additional interests prepare the individual as a more skillful resource. Proficiency in a variety of areas also adds a cushion to help weather a career change. With this in mind, let’s now review the four pillars of professional development in greater detail.

Dynamic training

This is “what” we do. It is rooted in the past, based on personal or vicarious experience. It is developed to fill a gap in our tasks. It is derived from our need to learn the basics and grow in the technical operations. In the beginning, most of what we learn is acquired through rote memorization and repeating skills to gain muscle memory.

Training also involves experimentation. Trying new things, such as a new pre-connect load, identifies a gap in the operation, validates the operation as the best for the situation, and/or demonstrates personal competence.

Academic education

This is the “why” of what we do. It is about learning and how to learn for future mastery. It is derived from research, science and the need to apply informed, safe operations. Academic education refers to the full spectrum of classroom learning. Most of us have been repeatedly told that we will not succeed without a college degree. However, not everyone has the aptitude or interest in many of the courses required to earn a degree. Reality has created a shift in our perception of a well-trained workforce. Following a high school diploma with advanced technical certification will certainly provide a long and successful (and less expensive) career.

If you do choose college, then selecting your college major is a significant life decision, and adding humanities and science experiences make for a well-rounded, strategically aware individual. College graduates often move into different career fields from their chosen field of study. Through experience they find other occupations more to their liking, many of which do not require a college degree. A survey from CareerBuilder (2013) submits that 32 percent of college grads said that they had never worked in a field related to their majors.¹ Consult a college advisor before investing your time and resources. 

Relevant experience

This is the application of what we know and what we can do to meet an existing or future condition. Diverse experiences affect how we will react to changing scenarios on the fireground or in the board room. They broaden our mental and physical capacities. In his book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell suggests the “10,000-Hour Rule,” arguing that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of approximately 10,000 hours.² The importance of deliberate practice—painstaking exercises to perfect some skill—cannot be overstated.

To be clear, what we learn (basic firefighter skills) is the result of our hands-on experience. You learn a lot from figuring out friction loss at the pump panel with real water flowing. A professor writing equations on a blackboard simply may not reach everyone in the classroom. Why we do these things (fire dynamics, human relations, department budgeting, etc.) is derived from our education.

True professional development requires a constant search for opportunities to be mentored. We learn to avoid land mines and how to hone our skills through the success and failures of those who have gone before us. Joe Flacco, the great Super Bowl champion quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, was once asked in a TV interview what made him successful. He responded, “I am not afraid to fail.” We learn as much (if not more) from our failures than through the honors of our successes.

Continuing education

This is how we remain current in our profession. It is derived from the need to sharpen our learned skills into real-world peak performance. It imposes the need to improve mission response and personal growth. We add to our base knowledge by attending conferences, webinars, specialized hands-on training sessions, reading articles in trade journals, seeking out new certification courses, and testing our abilities. We may also seek higher levels of formal education. For instance, EFOP courses are now accepted by many university master’s degree programs. New programs are being developed to help those yearning to master the soft skills required of technicians and managers alike.

Dealing with life-and-death situations is an awesome responsibility. A four-year Cadet Military Education and Training Plan (CMETP) prepares cadets to apply their knowledge and experience in an operational military environment using the Officer Development System (ODS) as its foundation. In addition to normal duties, these personnel are required to devote hundreds of hours in mandatory proficiency training. The fire service has developed guides as well, including the National Professional Development Matrix and the International Association of Fire Chief’s Officer Development Handbook.

Professional development influencers

There are several factors that impact the road to professional development, all of which apply to any firefighter, regardless of rank or role.

Attitude: Attitude plays a large part in the mental organization and general behavior of the individual. Your emotional state is one of the largest influencers of your readiness to learn and grow. It directly impacts your motivation to learn and participate. A positive attitude opens your mind for active engagement. Boredom, negative emotions and apathy limit our ability to immerse ourselves in the learning process. Feelings are the manifestations of both biological and cognitive processes working together. Feelings determine why we cry and why we laugh, successfully creating opportunities for creating meaning in the context of the learner’s experience. Learning does not happen without the ability to create meaning or internalize the content we are studying.

Aptitude: The terms intelligence, ability and aptitude are often used interchangeably. Aptitude is inborn potential to do certain kinds of work whether developed or undeveloped. Ability is developed knowledge, understanding, learned or acquired abilities (skills) or attitude. The innate nature of aptitude is in contrast to skills and achievement, which represent knowledge or ability that is gained through learning. 

Malcolm Gladwell also points out that it is often difficult to set apart an outstanding performance merely because of talent or simply because of hard training.² Talented people, as a rule, show high results immediately in few kinds of activity, but often only in a single direction. We weren’t born with technical skill sets. However, we were created with certain innate abilities that, when nurtured, support our proficiency in the career genre that we choose. For instance, those who fly advanced jet aircraft usually started in small, low-power, single-engine planes. They progressed to interests in multi-engine and jet aircraft, rotorcraft and so on. 

Inspiration: The inspired person is inherently driven by the work or learning itself. It is a contagious, fleeting moment of clarity found in achievement, for example a successful rescue, which has a tendency to raise the sense of possibility in others, like a child who dreams of becoming a firefighter. Then the one who is inspired performs their own achievements and inspires others, and so on down the line.

Inspiration makes us feel alive in the moment, both humbled and self-confident, surrendering and also powerful. But it is a self-satisfying, brief moment that drives us on to the next act or the next experience that will help us regain that feeling of fulfillment.

Environment: One of the factors that affect the efficiency of learning is the condition in which learning takes place. This includes the classrooms, textbooks, equipment, school supplies and other instructional materials. Learning is facilitated by the law of readiness or mindset. Learning does not occur unless the learner is ready to act or to learn. When a person is mentally and emotionally ready to learn, they learn more effectively and with greater satisfaction than when unprepared. When a person is ready to act and is prevented from doing so, they feel annoyed, bored, lost and/or confused. A positive mental mindset is conducive to effective learning. Effective learning takes place in environments that provide distraction-free comfort and both physical and psychological safety.

Be all that you can be

Gary Keller and Jay Papasan (2012) tell us in their book “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results” that “a healthy view of mastery means giving the best you have to become the best you can be at your most important work.”³ 

Exercise your power of choice intentionally, with wisdom and with an open mind. Our world is filled with possibilities if we only take the time to look around. The U.S. Army had it right when it encouraged each of us to “be all that we can be.” But we must also be the best at what we can be. And to do that requires a life-long commitment to active professional development. 

Now, the choice is yours.

References

1. CareerBuilder Press Release: One-Third of Workers Do Not Work in Occupations Related to Their College Major. 2013. https://tinyurl.com/CB-college-major.

2. Gladwell, Malcolm. “Outliers: The Story of Success.” 2008. Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY.

3. Keller, G. and Papasan, J. “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.” 2012. Bard Press, Austin, TX.

Sidebar: Resources

You have options that include both academy and technical skills. Look for learning opportunities that fit your style of learning and career goals. Here are just a few options: 

National Professional Development Matrix: Your career roadmap should include a copy of the National Professional Development Matrix with crosswalks for all four professional development pillars. The matrix was designed to help you avoid unnecessary redundancies in a resource-effective manner. Download the matrix at: usfa.fema.gov/training/prodev.

Officer Development Handbook: You may find relevant job proficiency requirements in the International Association of Fire Chief’s Officer Development Handbook: events.iafc.org/CompanyOfficers.

Training: Start with your own training officer and state fire training director. You may discover National Fire Academy courses that are taught in your own backyard. Visit the National Fire Academy website at apps.usfa.fema.gov/nfacourses.

Higher Education: The Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) initiative has developed and supported a national system of standardized college courses at both the associate’s and bachelor’s level. The FESHE working groups are also committed to development of graduate and post-graduate degree guidelines. To date, 106 colleges and universities across the country have acknowledged the commitment to provide this rigorous program, thus achieving FESHE Recognized status. Students completing the FESHE standardized courses qualify for National Fire Academy (NFA) certificates and credit on their NFA transcript. Completing the courses also helps make the transition from one FESHE school program to another almost seamless. Visit the USFA website to learn more about FESHE and locate a FESHE Recognized institution: usfa.fema.gov/training/prodev.